LA Riot Of 1992: A Summary And Analysis

When it comes to race and class struggles, there is always a debate. On May 1992, the city of Los Angeles witnessed an uprise in its citizens. Following the acquittal of four police office in the beating of a black man, riots began to breakout in the city. Looking at the different media coverages around that time, there are noticeable differences in their coverages and how class is used to describe the incidents. In this paper I will analyze how, through the use of imagery, word choices such as ‘rioters’, and the shifting of blame, the media played a significant role through their coverages in the King Trial, and ultimately the LA Riots of 1992.
One of the first noticeable things in the media coverage of the 1992 LA riots is the covers that

The LA riots of 1992 were preceded by the LAPD Trial of the officers in the Rodney King Case. On April 29 1992, a jury made up “10 whites, one Hispanic, and one Filipino” acquitted the charges of the police officers involved in the beating (History Channel 1992:1). “After hearing seven weeks of detailed testimony and studying the 81-second amateur videotape of the beating, the jury concluded that the policemen, all of whom were white, had not broken any laws when they clubbed and kicked the mostly prone motorist, Rodney G. King” (Mydans 1992:1). This shows how the riots occurred as a reaction to how unjust the law was in keeping its officers in check. Analysis of the riots through a Marxian perspective will show how the riots signified the uprising of the proletariat against the bourgeois. In modern times, this has become more evident in minority protests, often played out between blacks and whites. The LAPD at that time was predominantly white and its victims massively black and Hispanic (people of color). The LAPD symbolized the bourgeois because of the power they had in arresting and detaining people of color. When the blacks and Hispanics of L.A. became marginalized and oppressed according to their skin color, it was not surprising that in their explosion of class anger against their oppressors would take the form of riots against the LAPD and the city that employs them. Just as Marx predicted, when the when the rich and powerful overuse their powers, those from the lower class will revolt in order to change their living